Ziam one shots

Just Let Me Know (4)

Chapter 4: Part IV: On the Road Again

Chapter Text
Liam doesn't forgive him.

Zayn's not sure what made him think that Liam would (except that Liam always has in the past, always, no matter what Zayn did) but Liam doesn't.

Zayn waits and waits and waits, all alone at his flat, just waiting for Liam to let him know but Liam never does, and finally, after a week, Zayn gets it.

He understands that this silence is Liam letting him know after all.

And he swore that he'd be fine with that too, that it wouldn't matter if Liam decided that he didn't want Zayn, because Zayn would always be there for Liam, waiting. But he honestly thought that Liam would forgive him, and he's lost with the knowledge that Liam doesn't.

So Zayn gets outrageously drunk a few times, and he chain smokes until he's sure he's going to get lung cancer, and he lets himself fall apart for three days, and then he pulls himself back together.

He pulls himself back together and calls management, who reprimand him of course but fill him in anyways. And then he shifts back into Zayn Malik, one fifth of world famous boy band One Direction, and it's like everything else sort of fades away.

The rest of their time off passes in a blur until they're rehearsing, and Zayn would be a fucking liar if he said that his heart didn't stop beating when Liam walked into their new rehearsing space that first day. He'd be a liar if he said that he didn't hope outrageously that Liam would come to him immediately and wrap his arms around Zayn and whisper the words Zayn was so desperate to hear – I forgive you.

But that didn't happen.

Liam walked in that first day, and he shot Zayn a short smile that looked mostly forced, and Zayn made himself swallow back the sudden tears because he deserved it. He deserved for Liam to hate him, and he deserved to suffer through it.

After the rehearsal (which went surprisingly well, all things considered) the other three boys had filed out as though by agreement, and Liam stayed. Zayn – his damn optimist's heart cursed straight to hell – let himself hope again but –

"I haven't forgiven you yet."

Liam was straight to the point at least, and Zayn nodded, because ya, he deserved that.

But then Liam had continued, and it had... well it had seemed almost hopeful.

"I haven't forgiven you yet, but I'd like to be mates again. I can't do this distance anymore Zayn. Not for another tour. I need – I just want us to be normal."

And Zayn had agreed instantly of course, because isn't that what he had originally promised himself? Didn't he originally want to erase it all and go back to the beginning?

(He did, but he was lying to himself and he knows it. Fuck, Zayn knows that he can't actually do this. But he doesn't say anything, because he owes Liam. He owes Liam everything).

So that was that. Zayn and Liam gradually shifted back into a friendship that, while not exactly like how they had been before, was easier on everybody. They smiled, they laughed, they joked. The only rule, unspoken but also unbroken, was no touching.

Zayn pretended that it didn't gut him inside every time he started to reach out to Liam only to jerk back. He pretended that it didn't cut every time Liam pretended not to notice.

"Yo, Malik," Niall snaps his fingers in front of Zayn's face in the present.

Zayn startles and then scowls. "What?"

Niall raises a pale eyebrow but doesn't comment. "We're here, mate. Stop brooding."

Zayn looks out the window, and sure enough, the car has stopped outside their hotel. Just the first of many, many hotels and many, many venues, because this is it. They're on tour again. All those rehearsals where he and Liam bridged a tentative friendship, and this is what it was leading up to. Zayn's not sure their efforts will be enough. Tour – it's always a whole fucking different world.